Basil Harris is an emergency room physician who convinced his tech savvy siblings to enter a competition to build a portable medical device akin to the tricorder of Star Trek fame.

Chung-Kang Peng is a Harvard Medical School professor who was already working on a “mobile clinic” to improve healthcare access for rural parts of China when the Tricorder XPrize was announced.

It was perfect timing. He entered the contest.

After four years of work, Harris’s Final Frontier Medical Devices and Peng’s Dynamical Biomarkers Group are the last two standing for the $10 million Qualcomm Tricorder XPrize.

Los Angeles-based XPrize said Tuesday that it had trimmed the list of finalists in the competition from seven teams down to two. They will square off for one more series of consumer tests at UC San Diego’s Altman Clinical Translational Research Institute early next year.

The winner is expected to be named in mid 2017.

“We tested prototypes (from all seven finalists) on consumer volunteers, and we had explicit requirements necessary in order to continue in the competition,” said Grant Campany, head of the Tricorder XPrize. “We ended up with two teams that met the criteria.”

XPRIZE

The Harris brothers, George, Basil and Gus, are members of team Final Frontier.

The Harris brothers, George, Basil and Gus, are members of team Final Frontier. (XPRIZE)

The non-profit XPrize organizes contests designed to spark big leaps in technology innovation. Past contests included the Ansari XPrize to build a reusable private spacecraft and the Progressive Insurance XPrize to design a 100 mph per gallon vehicle.

All XPrize contests are challenging, but the Tricorder competition turned out to be surprisingly difficult, according to finalists.

Devices must weigh less than 5 pounds. They’re required to diagnose 13 health conditions and continuously monitor five vital signs.

“It includes diverse conditions from pneumonia to urinary tract infections, so different body parts, different body systems,” said Harris.

Perhaps as hard as the diagnostics technology was making the devices easy to use.

Under contest rules, operating the Tricorder couldn’t be more complicated than using a smartphone. The goal is to transform healthcare by designing devices that let people test their health at home.

“That is almost as big a challenge as getting the technology to work,” said Harris. “The combination of the two really speaks to how difficult the contest has been.”

Harris grew up watching “Star Trek” on TV. He got an advanced degree in engineering before switching to medicine. One of his brothers did the same thing. He cajoled his brother and other siblings — who have families and full-time jobs — to enter the Tricorder contest. They still assemble devices in Harris’s Pennsylvania garage.

XPRIZE

Final Frontier Medical Devices's design for the Tricorder XPrize

Final Frontier Medical Devices's design for the Tricorder XPrize (XPRIZE)

Chung-Kang Peng’s Dynamical Biomarkers is made up of about a dozen research scientists, physicians and mobile engineers sponsored by HTC.

It is an offshoot of the Center for Dynamical Biomarkers and Translational Medicine at National Central University in Taiwan, where Peng is also affiliated.

In early 2012, Peng was trying to develop a “mobile clinic” for rural areas of China, where about 800 million don’t have easy access to healthcare, he said.

“We started the project, and fortunately XPrize made their announcement of the Tricorder competition,” he said. “The mission was very close to what we were trying to do. So we jumped in.”

Although Dynamical Biomarkers has concentrated on the XPrize contest, it still hopes to deploy its system in rural China. Winning XPrize would boost its credibility, said Peng.

“Right now we are trying to convince the Chinese government to do a pilot project in remote provinces,” said Peng. “If we can do well in XPrize, it gives us potential because XPrize is internationally famous.”

The first prize winner will get $6 million, with $2 million for second place and an additional $1 million for the team that receives the highest vital signs score in the final round. About $1 million has already been awarded to teams in milestone prizes.

“Star Trek has inspired many engineers on a quest to improve the world by turning science fiction into reality,” said Qualcomm Executive Chairman Paul Jacobs in a statement. “Now our healthcare will be improved through the hard work and ingenuity of the Qualcomm Tricorder XPrize teams who are bringing the devices to life.”